The UN gives an ultimatum.

The Un is giving Iran 30 days to report to them that they stoppped enriching uranium for nuclear development.  They got 30 days and then what???, The UN will again make another ultimatum and the again, until there is a mushroom cloud over downtown NY City. 

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously demanded that Iran stop enriching uranium. The council has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear developments for the UN, to report in 30 days on whether Iran has obeyed the demand.

read the whole thing here.

H/T to Conservative Thinking

Stix

This is a very good post at Conservative Thinking.

Protests Show The Coming Overthrow Of America over at Conservative Thinking is one of the best post on the subject of ilegal immigration out there I have seen.  We need to start enforcing the laws that are already out there before we start making new law about illegal immigration.  All the laws on the books will amount to nothing if there are not enforced.

31 Mar 2006 – 1442 By Digger

President Bush has finished up his summit in Cancun, Mexico meeting with Canada and Mexico to discuss how he will continue to allow millions of illegal aliens into our country and do nothing to stop them. His incompetence on this issue is very apparent as he even states with a straight face that enforcement of laws on the books and cracking down on employers who hire illegal aliens is part of the solution to the problem.

Yet President Bush has done absolutely nothing and even stood in the way of bills that want to tackle these issues. He continues to push a guest worker program without seeming to want any real enforcement of laws already on the books. Giving illegal aliens a "path to citizenship" and an amnesty is the worst possible action that could be taken and will only encourage millions more to flood into the country in preparation of the next amnesty. Since the 1986 amnesty when there were an estimated 2-4 million illegal aliens in the country the illegal alien population has exploded to near 20 million. Anyone who thinks that any form of reward for illegal aliens is a good thing only has to look at the stats to see that it has not worked. Its time for the stick, the carrot didn’t work.

Illegal aliens are parading through our streets by the thousands, carrying foreign flags, threatening civil disobedience and demanding rights they feel they are entitled to simply by breaking all of our laws along the border. Americans better wake up to the continuing invasion. The invasion has slowly happened over the past 20 years and year after year is getting worse.

Now these groups are organizing and are encouraging students to take up the banner. I was watching a report on CNN on a student march in LA a few days ago and the reporter couldn’t finish his report after being swarmed with illegal alien students who overran him. Not surprisingly several of the male students in the back were posing for the cameras flashing MS-13 signs with their hands. These protests are not simple students taking up a grievance, they are organized by groups like La Raza, MEChA, MALDEF and even the gangs like MS-13 that want the overthrow of the government in these regions and a return of the southwest to Mexico.

All one has to do is take a look throughout history of how revolutions begin to see the true nature of all of these "protests" the past week. It is not simply poor illegal aliens wanting a job, it is groups wanting to take down our current system through economic blackmail, rioting, gang activity and organized influence of our governments laws in their favor by foreign powers.

Meanwhile the American people and the media in this country continue to ignore the issue or when reporting on it paint it as a bunch of poor disenfranchised people. We have continued to ignore the problem and now it is growing beyond our control. We need to put a stop to it and we need to put a stop to it now. If we continue to ignore the situation it will only grow worse.

Unchecked immigration in any form spells the downfall of any nation. The rioting in France that we see is due to unchecked immigration. It’s only a matter of time at the current rate of illegal immigration before we see the same thing here. Simply changing the status of illegal aliens to "guest workers" will not solve the problem. Giving 20 million people a legal status that allows them even further services than they already use is a recipe for disaster.

I think all Americans agree that immigration is a good thing. Continuing to allow this total ignoring of our laws and flooding of our population with unknown peoples who may have nefarious plans is not. For every 1 million illegal aliens coming here simply to work it only takes one terrorist who sneaks in with them to kill that many and more.

So while Bush fiddled in Mexico while America burned and the Senate continues to ignore the problem, these groups have organized to the point of revolution and nothing is being done. When they start dragging the teachers and other intellectuals out in the streets, just remember who let it all happen. Unfortunately all of us in this country will suffer if we do nothing to stop it. Call your representatives, support the Minutemen, speak out on the real problems of illegal immigration and not the sugar-coated one the media feeds you.

Is it worth giving up our country, it’s laws and it’s foundations in order to get cheap lettuce while politicians and businesses exploit this issue for their benefit? I think not.

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

Stix

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia 

Evangelicals & Iraq’s Ancient Christians

The New Republic’s current edition has an article on the diminishing number of indigenous Iraqi Christians – and how misguided American Evangelicals are greatly responsible for their problems with the majority Iraqi Muslims.  Apparently, the Evangelicals have poured in to save the souls of Iraqi Muslims which is stirring up trouble for the Christians already there for nearly 2,000 years.  Amy Welborn cites the article HERE.

A piece from the infamous new issue of The New Republic looks at the problem. (Piece not online, I don’t think.)

But, however much the clergy may deny it, Iraqi Christians suffer for their faith. Along with kidnappings and assassinations, church bombings—beginning with the destruction of five churches in August 2004—have become a staple of Christian life in Iraq. To disguise their faith, Christian women, particularly in Iraq’s south, tuck their hair under hijabs, while fewer and fewer attend church, performing Mass in homes and sometimes, like their ancient Christian ancestors, in crypts instead. Even the Kurds, so often depicted as saints in Iraq’s morality tale, have taken to pummeling Christians; the Kurdish religious affairs minister said last year that “those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society.” Commenting on a recent pogrom against Christian students in Mosul, Yonadam Kanna, the only Christian elected to Iraq’s new parliament, says, “The fanatics blame us for doing nothing.They blame us for being Christian.”

The blame accrues, in part, because of real and imagined ties to the West and to the Western power occupying Iraq. There is, in truth, a cultural affinity between Iraqi Christians, many of whom speak English (and, as such, account for a large percentage of the U.S. military’s interpreters), and the mostly Christian soldiers occupying their country. “[Local Christians] were very supportive of having us in Mosul,” says Colonel Mike Meese, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the heavily Christian city. “They’d have our soldiers go to Mass with them.” But, as soon as their American protectors departed, the city’s Christians became targets—their churches sacked and their archbishop kidnapped. In Baghdad, too, insurgents routinely execute Christians who work alongside the Americans. Threatened by her neighbors, a Christian friend of mine who worked in the Green Zone quit her job and today rarely leaves her house.

To the lengthy indictment of Christians, their persecutors have also added the charge of proselytizing. Unlike American soldiers, who mean to save Iraqi lives, the American evangelicals who followed on their heels mean to save Iraqi souls. There is a difference. Evangelizing to Iraqis carries with it risks that evangelizing to, say, Latin Americans does not. The infusion of pamphlets and missionaries from organizations like the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention enrages Iraqi Muslims, who, Iraqi Christian leaders claim, increasingly conflate their congregants with “the crusaders”—and, too often, treat them as such.“The evangelicals have caused such problems for us,” says Kanna.“They make the Sunni and Shia furious.”

Even though Iraq’s Christians suffer in the name of their American co-religionists, their fate seems not to have made the slightest impression on much of the evangelical establishment. Their websites and promotional literature advertise the importance of creating new Christian communities in Iraq while mostly ignoring the obligation to save ancient ones. Nor, with a few exceptions, have mainstream church leaders in the United States broached the subject, either. Dr. Carl Moeller, the president of Open Doors USA, an organization that supports persecuted Christians abroad, pins the blame on Christianity’s own sectarian rifts. “The denominations in Iraq aren’t recognized by Americans,” he explains.“The underlying attitude is, ‘They’re not us.’

Somebody’s got to get through to the Evangelicals and their missionaries that they are causing untold problems for Christians who have been in Iraq since not only before the Reformation and before there were Baptists, but even before Mohammed was born.   

UPDATE:  Here’s the entire article reprinted in The National Post, a Canadian on-line publication.  A distressing later section reveals that the US will not take in the persecuted Iraqi Christians!!!  "Fadi" is an Iraqi Christian whose nephew he ransomed from Muslim kidnappers and is now in Jordan b/c he can’t get admitted to the US where some relatives live.  Shocking!

As for Fadi himself, who first applied to leave Iraq in 1998 while Saddam Hussein was in power, last year’s kidnapping made him even more anxious to flee. With the doors to the United States sealed shut, he placed his faith in other Western countries. While over 40,000 Iraqi Christians have fled their homeland since the invasion, last year the United States permitted fewer than 200 Iraqis to immigrate. As for the thousands of remaining Christian refugees, until recently, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees didn’t even bother referring their cases to the United States, knowing the country had no inclination to take them in.

Their case files amount to proof of Washington’s callousness. There is, for instance, the Iraqi Christian who saw her husband gunned down in the street. Following the assassination of two more family members, she fell into a crippling depression, unable to care for her two-year-old child. Caught up in a bureaucratic tangle, her American relatives have gotten exactly nowhere trying to get her out of Iraq. Another sister of an Iraqi-American, a Christian woman with four children, lost her husband, killed while serving as a U.S. military interpreter. Her family, too, has been reduced to pleading her case before unconcerned State Department officials. A heartfelt advocate for Iraqi Christians, Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, calls embassies, by her account, "at all hours of the night," but "the policy since the war began is, ‘We’re not granting asylum.’ … There is no processing of refugees from Iraq." The reasons derive from post-September 11 security restrictions and, in the telling of a senior administration official, from the fiction that Iraqis, now liberated, no longer endure systematic persecution.

This is disgraceful.

Julia